Tag Archives: commercial

“This usually occurs when light enters the camera and hits the sensor or film directly appearing as a polygonal shape – the same shape as the diaphragm of the lens.”

There’s a conflict of views regarding whether a flare ruins or enhances a picture but I’ve found that in the right circumstances a bit of flare can enhance the artistic meaning of a photo. I’ve posted a flare-esq type shot below… cos i have a blog, so why not! See what you think. I personally am loving the flare!

A few weeks back I posted a video from wired.com (via strobist) about Clay Enos working on the street with nothing but a D3 and a bit of white Seamless. It’s something I’d been planning anyway, so we hit the streets of Brighton, UK and grabbed as many locals as we could. Most were more than willing and some were really friendly. A few just weren’t interested, but that’s the way it goes…

Here are a few previews from the shoot. All were shot with the Nikon D3x and a 50mm f/1.8. Black and white conversions were done in aperture. To see the whole project go to http://www.taylorassignments.com and click on “projects”. Let me know what you think.

Here’s a preview from the shoot mentioned in the last post. I’m able to show this image so soon after I’ve shot it because it is essentially personal work rather that for a client, so I have no non-disclosure to worry about.

This image is not quite finished, still a bit of photoshop to do, but I’m pleased anyway. It was shot with a Nikon D3x and a 14-24mm F/2.8. Bowens softboxes either side give the nice even light.

We’ve recently been shooting on location, at a large Golf Driving range and I thought it might be nice to give you a little behind the scenes tour via some pictures / documents. There’s also a behind the scenes video in the works, which will hopefully be online in a few weeks time…

This was a portfolio shoot, so didn’t have the budget that one might have on a commercial shoot. Sure, it cost money, but the models were new and looking for images for their portfolio and the driving range is getting some nice publicity shots in return, so all in all, the costs were kept to a minimum as there was no immediate return on it for us.

We shot 3 models (two girls and a guy) and had one makeup artist and one tech assistant / producer who also shot the behind the scenes material… and one photographer. Me.

The kit that went with us was 2 Nikon Bodies (D3x and D700) and a range of lenses, including the 14-24mm f/2.8 which is a fantastic lens. I used this glass for most of the shoot, I like the ever so slightly warped effect you get when the models are very close to camera. Makes things a bit different than just shooting with the 85 all the time. We also had 3 x Bowens 750+ monoblocs and all the usual gear including softboxes and umbrellas.

A lighting technique I use a lot is the sandwich technique, which utilizes a softbox either side of the talent, one slightly in front and the other slightly behind.

We aim to shoot tethered into aperture on a macbook pro where possible, but there were various restrictions on this location, so we shot onto memory cards. We also had a ton of other stuff that goes into a photoshoot… batteries, chargers, laptops, tripods, video gear etc etc etc…

Follow us on Twitter (@tayassignments) or check out the website. The first image that appears is from this shoot and there will be more to follow soon, in the commercial portfolio.